January 8-11 2010 WinterBash
I will be hosting the TeamTG 2010 WinterBash in Tracy, California.
Details to come. Get psyched.
OmniRune’s iMac Explodes
Never do video encoding on an enclosed heat death trap. Ever.
Going through the routine of digitizing my DVD collection, I put in Family Guy, went to sleep, and came back to the computer in the morning to find it turned off. And cold.
“Huh,” I thought to myself as I reached over to press the power button. Nothing. Looking down to the power strip, I turned it off and on, and then proceeded to press the power button. Silence. No whirl of the hard drive or the fan turning on.
A phone call, a day later and a trip to the apple store has resulted in confirming my worst fear: the power supply is fine. However, your computer has suffered a logic board failure.
“How much is that going to cost?” I asked. “$700 plus labor” cheerfully replied the Apple guy. “Take out the hard drive,” I asked him. He glanced at me, crunching some thoughts in his head, and then said “Why would you want that?”
“I have an external SATA enclosure. I want to take that hard drive and take the contents off. I am not paying $700 to fix a two year old computer when a new iMac costs $200 more.” He looked at me, nodded, and agreed.
I’m not buying another iMac. I require too much heavy-lifting to have it run by a machine that is essential an immobile laptop. I want professional quality, with a tower and unlimited room for additional hard drives.
A mac pro.
Pricing one out brings it to $4000. $3000 more than I want to spend. $2500 premium over building one yourself.
Today my parts arrive for my new machine. I went with an Intel i7 920 2.66 with 12 GB DDR3 RAM, 6 TB total hard drive capacity, ATI Radeon 4870 1 GB, 23″ LCD screen and a classy black case. Total cost? Mid-ranged iMac. Total power? A $4000 Mac Pro.
Loving it.
